Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s team on Wednesday denied arming the Taliban and mocked a CNN report to the contrary, despite U.S. worries that the Russians are backing the group.
“We have to say this again: Russia is not supplying weapons to the Taliban,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday. “Russia only maintains contact with them so as to protect the security of Russian citizens in Afghanistan and to encourage the Taliban to join the national reconciliation process.”
That statement was provoked by a CNN report featuring videos of putative Taliban officials saying they had received weapons from Russia. The report featured images of “Kalashnikov variants and heavy machine guns,” although the arms had been scrubbed of identifying markings. A representative of the Afghan central government didn’t hesitate to point the finger at Moscow.
“The Russians have said that they maintain contact with the Taliban, we have lots of other reports from other people they are arming the Taliban … there is no smoke without fire,” Afghan government spokesman Sediq Sediqi told CNN. “That’s why our intelligence agencies are up to the job to find out what level of support that is to the Taliban.”
Lavrov’s team said mocked CNN for featuring footage of the weaponry. “It is impossible to take videos that show obsolete weapons of unidentifiable origin seriously,” the Foreign Ministry said. “The Taliban drove American-made Humvees in a recent attack on the base of the Afghan National Security Forces in Helmand [Province]. It is easy to imagine the conclusion that can be made from this news based on CNN’s logic.”
The report also featured a pair of Taliban groups that claimed to have Russian-provided guns, although one of them didn’t obtain them directly. “Two separate sets of Taliban, one in the north and another in the west, claim to be in possession of the weapons, which they say were originally supplied by Russian government sources,” CNN reported. “One splinter group of Taliban near Herat [says] they obtained the guns after defeating a mainstream rival group of Taliban. Another group [says] they got the weapons for free across the border with Tajikistan and that they were provided by ‘the Russians.'”
U.S. military officials have suggested for months that Russia has decided to back the group.
“We continue to get reports of this assistance, and, of course, we had the overt legitimacy lent to the Taliban by the Russians,” U.S. Army Gen. John Nicholson said in April. “But arming belligerents or legitimizing belligerents who perpetuate attacks like we saw two days ago in Mazar-e-Sharif is not the best way forward to a peaceful reconciliation.”
That month, however, Russian President Vladimir Putin defended stronger ties with the Taliban. “[A]s far as the Taliban are concerned, many countries have contacts of one form or another with this organization [the Taliban],” he said. “Of course, they have many radicals in their ranks, but together with our partners, including U.N. representatives, we always take the view that we must develop relations with all forces in Afghanistan based on three main principles: recognition of Afghanistan’s constitution, disarmament, and reaching full national accord.”
